Five Ways To Make Twitter Less Stressful During The Holidays

Wonderful, schwonderful. Nothing’s bright and merry about your teenage cousin getting bombed on wine spritzers and throwing up all over your grandmother’s antique tablecloth, while your sister’s kids play “who’s under the table?” for three hours and the dog keeps nosing your crotch.

So you want to make sure you’re armed for all holiday happenings with stress-fighting tactics that’ll ward off any unneeded anxiety.

One good place to start: Twitter. We rely on Twitter on a daily (read: hourly) basis for everything from world news and celebrity intel to sales/deals and social gossip. Keeping up on Twitter means being fully informed about your industry, your career, the day’s vitals, and what your coworker ate for his 3 p.m. snack.

But being active on Twitter also means cramming even more data into your already wrung-out brain, which is all the more on info overload during the crazy holiday season.

So we’ve got a few tips to help you keep the Twitter stress to a minimum. Pick a few on our list below and you’ll be golden this holiday season.

1. SelfControl: Download SelfControl or another website-blocking service that lets you cut yourself off from accessing whichever sites you wish, for however long you wish. Might be a good idea if you’re trying to finish off a few projects before heading out of town for the holidays, or during family dinner. At the very least, turn your cellphone on vibrate or silent so all those Twitter alerts don’t drive you crazy.

2. Keep the tweets positive: There’s nothing worse than a Twitter Grinch, someone who hounds you for grammatical goofs or spreads negative messages onto your Twitter feed. Do your part to resist the urge to gripe, even if the line at the airport is ridiculous.

3. Unfollow tweeps who stress you out: If there’s anyone you follow on Twitter whose tweets are just not up your alley, don’t feel bad about unfollowing. There’s a reason that option exists. Whether it’s to do with personal beliefs — too much Jesus? — or a competitor in your field whose daily updates on rewards and accomplishments make you feel inferior, just remove them from your digital life. There — doesn’t that feel better?

4. Strengthen your password: Don’t let what happened to Wired‘s Mat Honan happen to you. Change up your password to a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and punctuation. One less thing to cross off your worry list this season.

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